


Mooned

by VeryNearly



Category: ASTRO (Band), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Asian Fairy Tales, Crazy Sexy Cool MV, Happy Ending, M/M, Modern Retelling, References to David Bowie, The duck from breathless, now with art, you're like the moon oon oon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-02-04 14:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryNearly/pseuds/VeryNearly
Summary: ~Eunwoo is an astronomy student driving home late at night.Moonbin is a moon deity descended from the stars.~





	1. Waxing Gibbous

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was going to do a one-shot. Now look at me.

Eunwoo was driving home late at night after his night classes. European Literature wasn’t that interesting, but more credits never hurt, he thought. Plus he enjoyed the late night drives. 

He rolled the windows down to let the breeze run across his face. It was a little nippier than he expected, but at the moment he didn’t mind. It was late September, and Eunwoo couldn’t help but think about Chuseok around the corner. His family had been asking him if he would come home for the national holiday, but it was a foregone conclusion that he would be spending this year on campus getting some extra studying done, just like he did the year before and the year before that.

He leaned up to the windshield to try to catch a glimpse of the moon. It was a common myth people told each other every year, that the biggest moon of the year was on Chuseok. In reality, the supermoon didn’t rely on seasons, or Korean national holidays. Eunwoo had been fiddling with the setting his new DSLR camera to take moon photos. Eunwoo might be an astronomy major, but he was still planning on getting that minor in photography. (Dual major, if he was lucky.) He hadn’t had too much free time lately with exams coming up, so was still fiddling with his camera to find those perfect settings to capture the moon. He was pretty much the only person who drove up and down this backroad on Tuesdays to get to class, and it was far from the city’s light pollution, which made it the perfect place to take some long exposure shots of the sky. 

The sky was especially cloudless today, Eunwoo thought. It was a perfect time to test out his new camera. Ignoring the flashing clock on his car radio, he pulled over to the side of the road. Shrugging on his jacket, he turned off his headlights, unlocked his trunk and walked around his car to pull out his tripod. Eunwoo set it up near his passenger side mirror, tilted the lens up, set the aperture low, and began flipping through the white balances. 

His suitemate- Jinwoo’s- first real words to him were about his photography. He was sitting on the floor of his dorm deleting photos on his SD card that he thought weren’t up to snuff, when Jinwoo came in to watch him, swinging a bottle of root beer between his fingers. “You know Eunwoo, I respect your photography shit.”

Eunwoo had been surprised, so he had just thanked him for his kind words. “Yeah,” Jinwoo had continued. “You know, lots of guys I know are just doing photography to meet hot models and get laid. But it’s obvious to me you’re doing it because you love it. Because you’re getting neither of those things.”

It hadn’t been a good first impression, but Jinwoo was one of Eunwoo’s closest friends now. Shelving that memory away, Eunwoo found he was finally happy with his settings. He turned his camera upwards to face the moon.

But the moon was gone. Eunwoo took his eye out of the viewfinder in confusion. He had just seen the moon a second ago. Flustered, he leaned over backwards towards the sky. The stars were all still there, and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. He spun in a circle, when he noticed a bright light source coming from the corner of his eye. 

It was a twinkling, tiny sort of piercing blue light. He had thought it was a car approaching at first, but the light emanated from behind the tree leaves and branches, radiating from deep within the forest. It was a pulsing glow, that only shone brighter and brighter.

His curiosity took over and Eunwoo started to climb up towards the light, his sneakers slightly slipping against the fall leaves as he tip-toed deeper into the thicket. He didn’t have to pull his phone out for light, because the trees and bushes were faintly illuminated in a strange blueish light, seeming to glow from the right angles. 

The light was coming from an area above a medium sized clearing in the woods. It had a big stump in the middle, with a silvery powder dusting the ground around it, making the ground look luminous and otherworldly. Eunwoo blindly tugged his coat closer around him and crouched behind his closest cover, which was a patch of bushes and shrubbery nearby. 

From the hole in the tree line, Eunwoo made out what looked like flapping cloth in the sky, flapping in the breeze. He almost convinced himself that someone’s laundry had gotten swept away in the wind, but it shimmered and waved around in such an unearthly manner that it gave Eunwoo pause. Glittery dust rained from the sky, catching the light as Eunwoo peeked out from the bushes to get a better look. 

It was a boy. A young man, that looked around Eunwoo’s age, with long arms and narrow hips and long legs, descending slowly from above the treetops floating down, legs making slow cycling motions as if helping him keep his balance. The long pale blue flaps of his hanbok rippled behind him slowly and languidly; his sash and thin, shimmery scarf dragging behind him in a long silky arc. He was looking upwards to the sky, the long column of his throat exposed to Eunwoo, his skin pale and wan like milk tea, his hair black and backlit by that ethereal white glow from above. 

But what was most strange, was that under his arm was tucked a white, fluffy duck. It was even whiter than the boy’s chalky hands, almost glowing, with a thin blue ribbon tied around its neck, held securely in his arms. 

Eunwoo stared in awe as the boy slowly descended, his body gradually righting itself, his legs stretching out, brushing his toes against the ground. He twisted, finding his center of balance as his bare feet touched the ground, soles crunching against the soft earthen floor, grass nestling between his toes, twigs snapping under his weight.

Just as he found his balance, the duck flapped its wings impatiently, making the boy let go of him, the duck flopping to the ground and quacked loudly. Eunwoo jumped at the unexpected sound, and rattled his bush. He fell backwards, butt hitting the dirt, head thumping against the ground as the young boy’s eyes quickly sought Eunwoo out in the bushes. Looking shocked, the boy took a few faltering steps towards Eunwoo as if to help him, but Eunwoo had already pulled himself back to his feet, and was scrambling away, tracing his path through the forest back to the road, and back to his car. Eunwoo almost cried a breath of relief as he caught the faint reflection of his black car parked against the side of the road, and slid down the side of the hill, not even questioning what he just saw. 

Not looking back, Eunwoo threw open his car door and placed his trembling hands on the steering wheel. He took a deep breath, and then willed his shaking hands to turn the car keys into ignition and pressed his foot against the gas pedal, his car darting away under a moonless sky, his engine thrumming alongside his beating heart. 


	2. Full Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s a little more expository that i’d like it to be, but it is what it is. I also bumped the chapter count up from 5 to 7. Ahhh, what is happening.

Eunwoo burst into the academy building shaken to his core, cheeks pink from the cold, quickly stomping up the stairs to his dorm, hands shaking as he retrieved his keys from his back pocket and fumbled to fit them in the lock. 

He could pretend nothing had happened, like this was just another normal day. He could just open the door, greet his roommates, and pretend like nothing happened. Nothing at all.

He took a deep breath. Yup. Just another normal day. Yup, yep, yep. 

When he tried to slot his key in, his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't get the door to open. Plan A it was.

Eunwoo began pounding on the door with a  closed fist. “Let me in!”

“Who is it?” someone leisurely called from inside.

“Eunwoo! It's Eunwoo let me in!” he yelled, punching the door faster and faster with every passing second.

“Eunwoo stop!” Someone threw to door open, revealing an irritated-looking Sanha on the other side. At least, Sanha trying to look irritated. He had such a baby face, it was hard to take him seriously at times. 

Sanha was actually just a high schooler, but he ended up as their roommate when no one else responded to the Jinwoo’s flyers he posted on the library message board. Nobody from campus housing either noticed or cared that one of their roommates wasn’t a college student. 

“Gosh Eunwoo chill out. How’d you get locked out anyways?” Sanha said, already in his blue-striped pajamas. His eyes were tired with sleep. He stepped to the side to let Eunwoo in. “We were starting to wonder where you were,” 

“Something…” Eunwoo breathed. “...Crazy just happened.”

Jinwoo and his boyfriend MJ were sitting at his desk, looking up from whatever textbook they were reading from at the sound of Eunwoo’s breathy voice. MJ wasn’t their roommate, but he might as well have been with how often he was at their dorm. Jinwoo frowned, a look of concern now painted across his face. “Huh? What? What’s wrong?”

“I saw a… there was…”

“Did you run over a turtle again?” Sanha asked, shutting the door behind them.

“What? Ohmigod noooo,” MJ said, closing the textbook looking genuinely concerned. During finals week last year, Eunwoo ran over a turtle on his way back from tutoring, drove all the way back to the dorm in complete silence, and then burst into a bout of hysterical tears. 

“What? No! It’s nothing like that! That situation was an outlier, I was stressed out back then.”

“Oh, like you're not stressed out now?”

“That's not even relevant right now, I saw-” Eunwoo didn’t think this through. How was he going to convince his friends of what he just saw and get them to believe him?  “It’s…” Eunwoo suddenly pointed to Minhyuk, who was texting on his bed. 

“Minhyuk! What’s the moon cycle right now?” 

Minhyuk was the second youngest of the five of them. He wasn’t an astronomy major, but he took the intro course, just for the credits. He was lounging on his bed, bored. He didn’t even look up from his phone. “Should be a gibbous yeah? It’s almost Chuseok, it’s always full moon on Chuseok.”

“No, no, no, check your phone out your calendar or something.” he demanded, trying to snatch Minhyuk phone away from him. 

“What? No! Get your own phone! I’m texting!” 

Sanha pulled out his cellphone then, only to have it immediately snatched away by Eunwoo. Eunwoo typed frantically, then held it out for them to see, taking the time to wave it in front of everyone’s faces. “Look! The moon is a  _ Late-quarter waxing gibbous _ , that means it should be almost full, right? Not a new moon? Visible, right?”

MJ, pushed the phone out of his face, a little annoyed. “Eunwoo, you don’t have to tell us that.”

“But it’s  _ not! _ Look out the window,  _ the moon’s gone! It’s fucking gone!” _

There was a beat of silence in the room. Jinwoo blinked once. And again. “Eunwoo I thought this was going to be something serious.”

“I  _ am _ serious!” Eunwoo grabbed Jinwoo from his desk and pushed him towards the windows. They had large shuttered windows that ran across the side of the room, leftovers from when the building was still a warehouse. Eunwoo fumbled with the lock on the window for a second, before pushing it out and open, nudging Jinwoo to stick his head out. The night air was crisp and cool, and stung their faces. Over the glimmering skyline of residential and commercial buildings was a pitchy, inky black sky. “Look! No moon!”

Jinwoo looked from the sky back at Eunwoo, clearly trying to justify it to himself. “It’s probably just cloudy,” he said faltering. Sanha poked his head out a seperate window, now taking in the view himself. 

“But you can still see the stars,” said Sanha, pointing out Cassiopeia. Jinwoo combed his eyes across the sky quickly. 

“This… Is it just behind a building or something…?”

“What building? No! No, no, no this isn’t the weirdest part Jinwoo. I  _ saw _ the moon! I was driving back from European Literature 2501 on that back road I use, you know the one, and I saw it!”

“What?”

“The moon! Sort of, I mean, I think so. But I think know where it went!” Eunwoo insisted, shaking Jinwoo back and forth now.

“Bwa- what are you talking about?” Jinwoo said, disentangling himself from Eunwoo. “You saw the moon?”

“Out in the woods!”

Jinwoo looked him up and down quietly. “Um… Okay. So you're saying… the moon is in the woods right now? Like literally?”

“Yes! I mean, no! I saw this boy! This boy, black hair, around my height, barefoot and had this pearly sort of skin. He wore a… a blue hanbok, the old longs ones with the outer coat, and had a long sash wrapped all around his waist and shoulders and- and... He- he fell from the  _ fucking  _ sky! He was glowing and  _ floating _ and he descended from the sky to the earth, it was- it was-” Eunwoo ended his tirade in a vague sort of auditory trail off and wild hand gestures. He looked at Jinwoo earnestly.

“So… you’re saying the moon… turned into a guy?” Jinwoo said slowly. Eunwoo nodded vigorously, fixing his complete attention on Jinwoo. Jinnwoo would believe him. Jinwoo always heard him out, he was very rational. ...Right? Jinwoo’s face looked puckered and doubtful. Eunwoo put a hand on his shoulder.

“Jinwoo? You believe me right?”

MJ squeezed in the conversation, putting himself between Jinwoo and crazy-eyed Eunwoo. “ _ Eunwoo are you serious? _ Are you on drugs? I’ll be happier if you just say you’re on drugs.” 

“No I'm telling the truth! The moon, he was- he had-!”

“Did he have a bunny?” Sanha piped up, giggling slightly.

“Sanha, don’t encourage him.” 

“No, no, no! That’s the weirdest thing! He didn’t have a bunny, he had a  _ duck!”   _ Eunwoo made the shape of a duck with his hands, wildly gesturing to its width and height. “He held it under his arm; it was a white duck with a blue bow tied around its neck.”

Jinwoo started to leave but Eunwoo grabbed his sleeve. 

“No, I’m serious!” Eunwoo said, increasingly desperate. 

“Eunwoo…”

“I’ll show you!” he declared suddenly. “Get in my car, I’ll drive you there  _ right now _ .”

A hush fell over the five of them, looking at Eunwoo is varying levels of disbelief. MJ scooted over to Jinwoo’s side. “Should we call the student health center?”

“I can hear you!”

_ “I _ think we should check it out.”

“Sanha!” MJ said in disbelief.  

“Why would Eunwoo lie? If we go there and there’s no duck, we can check Eunwoo into that psychiatric ward-”

“Hey!”

“-And if he’s telling the truth...” Sanha shrugged. “Well… why not?”

“ _ Why not?  _ What if you  _ die?” _ MJ said.

“We’re not going to die in the woods, MJ.”

“But  _ what if?” _

“I’ll go,” said Jinwoo suddenly. MJ turned to him, surprised. 

“What?”

“I don’t have any classes until 3:00 tomorrow... and it’ll be no trouble looking right? I’m also a little curious,” he lied. Truthfully, he also wanted to make sure Eunwoo and Sanha didn’t die in the forest. MJ frowned, then puffed his chest out.

“If Jinwoo’s going I’ll go too! But I’m driving!”

“Um, I have an 8:00 AM tomorrow…”

“Minhyuk don’t lie and act like you don’t skip psychology class anyways.”

“... I ggguess I can go then.”

“Okay!” Eunwoo said nodding. “Okay, yeah! Good!”

**Author's Note:**

> You know, I said I was really feeling the Halloween spirit in my last fic I wrote, [Safety Pinned Cat Tail.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476396/chapters/28397620) But of course, Moon Festival was a few weeks before that and I was feeling that moon spirit too. (Whatever that means) However I didn’t have a good writing concept back then besides “Moonbin = Moon” until I saw the new Crazy, Sexy, Cool MV. After watching it… well, this was born.
> 
> I went into the writing process thinking about the Chinese legend of Cháng é, but in reality it’s more related to the legend of The Cowherder and the Weaver Girl. That was actually on accident, I think I mixed the two up in my head when I was a kid. For anyone unfamiliar with those two fairytales I might go a little more in depth in a later chapter. You can always google it too, but the way my mom told me, I have more details in my head, lol.


End file.
